


GOVERNOR RUSSELL 

AND HIS CANVASS OF CAPE COD. 

November 7Th, 1892. 



"All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality govern- 
ments by public opinion, and it is on the quality of this public opinion 
that their prosperity depends. * * * Democracy in its best" sense is 
merely the letting in of light and air." — Lowell : Democracy. 




THE REPUBLIC PRESS: 
NEW YORK. 



1893. 




Book^KSJ- 



GOVERNOR RUSSELL 

A>JD HIS CA^^VASS OF CAPE COD. 

November yxH, 1892.. 



"All free governments, whatever their name, ar^ in reality govern- 
ments by public opinion, and it is on the quality oi^this public opinion 
that their prosperity depends. * * * Democracy in its best sense is 
merely the letting in of light and air." — Lowell : Democracy. 



.^ 



XX^^k. W\M<^ Cr-->-v 




THE REPUBLIC PRESS: 
NEW YORK. 



1893. 






To Henry C. Thacher and 
Thomas C. Thacher. 



NOBIS HA EC OTIA. 






500 COPIES PRINTED 
FOR PRIVATE DlSTRlliUTlON. 



PREFACE. 

" I ^HIS sketch of a notable event, of which the 
writer was a fortunate eye-witness, was 
originally prepared for publication immediately 
after the last election, but subsequently with- 
held, that the substance of it mitrht be related 
at a dinner given by Mr. Henry Villard to 
President-elect Cleveland, at Sherry's, New York, 
November 17th, 1892. This honorable delay, 
however, closed the columns in which the writer 
had hoped to publish his article — for it was no 
longer " news," nor had it yet become history. 
Three months have now passed since the elec- 
tions and the excitement attending them has 
entirely abated ; but friends, in wdiose judgment 
the writer has every confidence, are still urging 
him to put his sketch in a form for permanent 
preservation, and he now does so, not only in 
deference to their advice, but because he believes 
the remarkable achievement which he has nar- 
rated belongs to and will take its place in our 
political annals ; and because, so far as he knows, 
although he writes as a frank (and, he hopes, a 



fair) partisan, this is the only account of it 
extant which was leisurely written, from full 
notes made at the time, with no view to colorings 
or obscuring the facts, and with no compulsion 
on the writer to subordinate the pleasing sim- 
plicity of the scenes through which he was 
passing to the demands of a "breezy" or "hu- 
morous " newspaper narrative. 

L. McK. G. 

Llewellyn Park. A,^ _^<Vti;m ioAA/i^-vu . 

Orange, New Jersey, ^ 

February gth, 1S93. 





^MONG THE most remarkable incidents of the 
^y remarkable campaign just ended, if not of all 

American political campaigning, was Governor 
Russell's invasion, the day before election, of the 
Republican fastnesses of Cape Cod. It was a concep- 
tion so original that until (like the "Madman" Sher- 
man's March to the Sea) accomplishment had justified 
it as a piece of the boldest and wisest strategy, friends 
looked upon it as a mere venture, and the opposition, 
as rank folly. 

The credit for its suggestion lies with Henry C. 
Thacher, candidate for Congress for the Thirteenth 
Massachusetts District, and a life-long resident of the 
Cape ; his son, who is conspicuously identified with the 
young Democrats of the State ; and George T. Mc- 
Laughlin of Sandwich, an old and widely-known 
Democrat in a district where, for a generation, Demo- 
crats had been almost as scarce as the original Pequots. 
These gentlemen rightly calculated the amount of local 
enthusiasm which a visit from the Governor of the 
Commonwealth would arouse throughout a great re- 
gion which only one Governor in years (and he, the 
eccentric Butler) had deigned to visit officially, and 
whose local pride had been hurt, because during the 



6 GOVERNOR RUSSELL 

same period no county fair or cattle show had seemed 
too insignificant to summon the Chief Magistrate to 
the extremcst h'mitsof the Commonwealth in any other 
quarter; and they shrewdly guessed at the profit to be 
gained by proselyting among political heathen, who 
had never even heard the preachers of the new faith, 
and whose medicine men, believing their conversion 
impossible, had long since ceased to shake the rattle 
before them. The Governor had nothing to gain by 
campaigning elsewhere through the State, where he 
was everywhere familiarly known ; but here was a 
population, neglected by its own political leaders, 
where the change of o)ic opinion meant a change of 
two votes ; and he determined to address himself to 
bringing about such a change. 

The Republicans either affected to find such a 
mission a huge jest, or to be shocked at the "effront- 
ery " of such an "indecent bid" for votes; but the 
Governor, with quick audacity, turned this weapon 
against them by specifically avowing in every speech he 
made — what was perfectly obvious — that he did come 
on a vote-seeking tour and not on an ofificial visit ; that 
it was the duty of a Governor who was a candidate for 
re-election to submit his administration to the people 
of the Commonwealth to be judged; and that if he 
had no access to any part of the people through the 
ordinary mediums of communication, to come before 
them personally and ask for a fair hearing. 

As this hearing before the people of Cape Cod, if 
had at all, could only be had by severally visiting a 
number of small towns, far apart and little inter-related, 



AND HIS CANVASS OF CAPE COD. 7 

the novel plan was suggested by the Messrs. Thacher 
of a series of open-air addresses from the platform of a 
car, before audiences to be summoned (on forty-eight 
hours' notice by placard) to the local depots along the 
line of the Old Colony Railroad, at hours varying from 
early morning till late afternoon. 

The plans were finally ratified on Friday, November 
4th. On Saturday, the 5th, placards announcing the 
coming visit were spread broadcast through the Cape, 
in all the towns within fifteen miles of the line of the 
route; and late in the afternoon of November 6th, 
Sunday, the special train in which the Governor was 
to travel bore his party from Boston, and with but one 
or two stops reached Provincetown, at the extreme end 
of the Cape, about half , past ten at night. 

There were two cars, a big parlor car and a smoker, 
which, as well as the engine, were profusely decked 
with bunting. With a clear track, they flew past the 
villages where the ordinary train on the Old Colony 
lingers regretfully, but not so fast but what its party 
could see groups about the various stations, waiting in 
the darkness for a glimpse of the Governor, or, at least, 
of the official coach, and coming up when the train 
stopped to rub the wet from the car windows, that 
they might look inside ; and could enjoy the burst of 
red fire with which some zealous friends at Eastham 
beautified hill and hollow. 

The company in the train was a brilliant and lively 
one. Beside the composed (almost impassive) Gov- 
ernor sat Mr. Carroll, the young candidate for Lieu- 
tenant-Governor, and Mr. Hamlin, younger still in 



8 GOVERNOR RUSSELL 

looks and years, candidate for Secretary of State, both 
fighting hopeless fights with all their physical and 
mental power, the former almost ill from nervousness 
and fatigue, but the latter quite undisturbed. There 
was the powerful, quizzical face of Patrick A. Collins, 
and Congressman Joe O'Neill's irresistible comedian's 
mask ; Mayor Matthews, sombre and tired out by the 
duties of office and the management of two congres- 
sional campaigns; the massive, determined physiognomy 
of candidate Thacher; Robert Burnett, Col. Harry 
Russell, the Governor's younger brother; Lee Meri- 
wether, the traveller and economist; Thomas C. 
Thacher, Commissioner Curran of Boston, and several 
others, not to speak of reporters from all the Boston 
papers, hostile and friendly. 

For those who only vaguely remember the map of 
Cape Cod, it might be said that it resembles a human 
arm bent up at the elbow and (in lieu of a hand) 
terminating in a hook, like Captain Cuttle's, formed by 
a long strip of low land, which curves out and away 
into Massachusetts Bay from the piled up sand-dunes 
that end the Cape. Within its shelter is a large but 
shallow harbor, along whose inner margin, bent about 
it crescent-wise, lies Provincetown, since old Marble- 
head was burned, the most picturesque seaboard town 
in Massachusetts. 

Its houses are venerable of outline, but like all the 
wooden houses of the Cape, brightly painted, and most 
of them painted white ; the streets have but a single 
sidewalk each, a broad wooden one, which runs along 
beside one row of houses. Close behind the town, 



AND HIS CANVASS OF CAPE COD. 9 

and curving with the curve of the harbor, Hes a huge 
rampart of sand — a dune overgrown with weeds and 
tough grass, which rises to a height of nearly a hundred 
feet sheer out of level ground. On its top once stood 
the town hall, a fine building, which was unluckily 
burned down a short while ago; but it is still as much 
the city's centre as Beacon Hill is Boston's; and wher- 
ever one looks down one of the short cross-streets he 
sees them end against its abrupt rise, as the lower town 
streets in old Heidelberg, against the Schlossberg. 
From its sandy summit he beholds spread beneath him 
on the one side an ellipse of shingled roofs, broken 
here and there by an airy white belfry, and, on the 
other, a volcanic upheaval of yellow sand-hills (between 
which are sedgy ponds and beyond which is the limit- 
less blue sea) fairly aglow, under the brilliant sky of a 
November day, with the late-changing color of the 
low bushes whose bronzes and purples give a peacock 
lustre to the prevailing green of the scrub against 
which they are contrasted. 

Provincetown's modern town hall is a commodious 
one ; it would hold a thousand people with ease, and 
twelve hundred comfortably. The meeting that was 
to take place there on Monday morning, November the 
7th, had been advertised scarcely two days, and that 
merely by a few placards; but further advertising 
could have done no more, even if the town crier, who 
still survives, had been pressed into service to make 
the rounds with his bell. There was a band, however, 
a very good local band, which played for some time in 
front of the hotel early Monday morning, and subse- 



10 GOVERNOR RUSSELL 

quently escorted the Governor's party through crowded 
streets to the hall. It was then a little before eight 
o'clock, but the streets were alive; and when the local 
chairman tremulously called the meeting to order a few 
minutes after eight o'clock, the hall was crowded to 
the limit of its capacity. There was never, perhaps, a 
political meeting got together in time of peace under 
such singular conditions; for here was assembled, at 
breakfast time, what was virtually a town's whole 
people, who had come to hear political speeches from 
the advocate of a party which represented about one- 
seventh of its total poll! "Why, sir," said Mr. Collins 
to the Governor, "■ tliis is a grander compliment than 
a re-election !" 

The audience was well dressed, very decorous, and 
extremely attentive, but the Democratic element was 
hardly represented beyond the front benches, and 
although Mr. Russell was received upon his introduc- 
tion with unanimous applause, the audience, after 
having made this demonstration of respect, disposed 
itself to be critical. 

The Governor was more than equal to the emer- 
gency and displayed all those qualities which have 
made him, if not a great orator, the most persuasive 
and captivating of advocates. He has neither a com- 
manding physique nor an arresting presence, nor great 
passion, nor invective, nor a soaring imagination; but 
the shrewd homeliness and sweet temper of his Lin- 
colnian. face," and his agreeable voice and easy gesture 
serve, perhaps, even better to prepossess the listener 
in his favor; and no one surpasses him in clearness of 



AND HIS CANVASS OF CAPE COD. I I 

statement, in aptness of illustration, in simplicity of 
argument, in the power of making himself understood, 
or can equal him in convincing an audience of the 
speaker's absolute fairness and candor. So much for 
the potency of his mere appearance and method ; but 
manner and method would go for naught were it not 
for the intellectual poise (in which caution is mingled 
with wise audacity) which makes William E. Russell 
such a formidable antagonist. 

The Governor had but twent3Mninutes at Province- 
town, but he managed to condense into that time a 
wonderfully vigorous attack on the Republican party. 
State and National. As to State issues, he began by 
admitting frankly and simply that he came to Province- 
town seeking votes, and ready and anxious to account 
to the people for his exercise of the trust they had 
bestowed on him. He narrated his efforts and his 
failure to prevail upon Mr. Haile to meet him "man 
fashion" on the platform and criticise the administration, 
and avow where he was standing on the questions 
"with which," he said, " Mr. Haile will have to deal 
if he becomes Governor." He recounted his attempt 
to remove, for corruption in office, Police Commissioner 
Osborne of Boston who, it was singular to notice, was 
a live " issue" in a country town over a hundred miles 
away ; and with a fine burst of irony he alluded to 
Osborne's present efforts "to elect Mr. Haile, a pro- 
hibitionist, by coercing the liquor dealers of Boston, 
and so, as they say, to redeem the Commonwealth." 
He spoke of the habitual unfairness of the Republicans 
in dealing with an administration which they proposed 



12 GOVERNOR RUSSKLL 

to supplant, "without a word of responsible criticism," 
" by electing a candidate who dare say nothing, 
standing on a platform that means nothing." The 
coldness of the Governor's audience had vanished ; and 
during the second half of his speech, when he made 
the most lucid exposition of the purpose and effect of 
the McKinley tariff that ten minutes would permit of 
(always keeping artfully in the foreground the deadly 
self-contradictions of his opponents), he was splendidly 
applauded, especially when he closed by naming the 
National and Congressional candidates. 

Carroll and Collins had an excited audience, and 
made short and lively speeches that kept them bubbling 
with an enthusiasm which, considering their politics, 
was extraordinary. Then the meeting adjourned from 
the platform to the floor ; and there the Governor, for 
fifteen minutes, shook hands with the city of Province- 
town. Here, again, his simplicity of manner appeared 
most strikingly — dignified, yet cordial, and cordial 
without the least effusiveness. He was offered many 
babies to kiss. (It is a trifling thing; but though he 
declined to kiss any baby during the day, he offended 
no mother in refusing her). At nine o'clock the party 
were in the train, headed for Boston and under way, 
and during the next six hours their life was an alterna- 
tion of short, swift runs and intense and exciting halts, 
each one amidst an audience a little bigger and a 
little more enthusiastic than the one before. 

Just after leaving Provincetown, there was a 
momentary stop by the wayside, at the urgent request 
of five life-saving men in full dress uniform, who 



AND HIS CANVASS OF CAPE COD. 1 3 

wished to shake the Governor's hand, and later in the 
day there was an unscheduled stop for a large crowd 
of working-men at Tremont, but otherwise the long 
pre-arranged schedule was observed with literal exact- 
ness. The train ran in at a station and stopped ; the 
speaking at once began ; the hand-shaking was hurried 
through with ; a whistle blew, at which everybody 
tumbled back into the cars; a second whistle set the 
train moving; and then the next station began to loom 
up in prospect. 

At first the way lay between high dunes and rolling 
moors, purple at the bottom with cranberry bogs, 
covered with dun grass on their slopes and, in patches, 
brilliant with changing leaves. Sometimes the ocean 
was in sight, on the left — sometimes the bay, on the 
right — sometimes both were visible at once; and, for 
a long time, across the smooth blue water, could be 
seen the houses of Provincetown lying in a pearly 
crescent ; and from the windows, novel apparitions — 
queer lateen sails — fat old windmills — long weirs and 
slender belfries — constantly charmed the unaccustomed 
eye. 

After leaving Provincetown, the first few audiences 
were very small, the neighboring country being sparsely 
populated ; but after leaving Truro they steadily grew 
again, till at Middleboro the voice could not reach to 
the limit of the crowd. At the first towns there was 
little but curiosity in the assembling of the people, 
unless their lack of responsiveness was altogether due 
to that New England sense of propriety which forbids 
that one should "laugh right out in meetin.'" It is 



14 GOVERNOR RUSSELL 

probable, though, that their profoundly rooted Repub- 
licanism found little comfort in the ciuestions the 
Governor was putting them from the platform. 

These meetings, informal as they were — (a mere 
country crowd clustering over the platform of a small 
way-station and the bed of the railroad track) — were 
none the less impressive from the good behavior of the 
people and the innate courtesy of demeanor and self- 
respect that is inherent in all native American gather- 
ings. When the time came when they might take the 
Governor of their State by the hand, they did so with 
evident shyness and equally evident gratification ; but 
there was nowhere a trace either of familiarity or of 
false humility (even in the awestruck boys and girls that 
averted their faces as they passed him, lest the eye of 
Jupiter should shrivel them like Semele). Nor was 
the Governor's bearing unworthy of his constituents. 

At many places there was some decoration — f^ags 
hung out — portraits of the Gov.ernor framed in colors, 
or placards of welcome. At Wellfleet, a schoolmistress 
led to the station her whole school, some twenty-five 
little girls, whom she had provided, each one, with a 
small American flag — probably at no little sacrifice to 
herself of time and money. At the same place, a little 
girl handed to the Governor a large bouquet of chrys- 
anthemums (as " to one who loves the children,") and 
at other stops there were more and still larger bouquets, 
till one heaped-up corner of the car gave it a theatrical 
air. " The Russell and Carroll Opera Troupe, limited," 
somebody called it; " unlimited," corrected another, 
who was nearer to the truth ; for there seemed to be 



AND HIS CANVASS OF CAPE COD. 1 5 

no end to the huge bunches of these hardy exotics 
that were flung on the increasing heap after every halt. 
At one or two stops, notably West Barnstable and 
Sandwich, stands draped in colors had been erected 
by thoughtful local committees, for the convenience of 
the speakers ; and at 'East Brewster the entire station 
was hidden in bunting and the platform spread with 
rugs for the honor of the Commonwealth. All these 
demonstrations of courtesy, like the red fire that 
greeted the train the preceding night and the assem- 
bling of these great crowds themselves, were purely 
spontaneous, planned at less than two days' notice, 
and were in many features quite non-partisan. 

The Governor spoke from the rear platform of the 
last car, his left arm resting lightly on the brake, and 
his right hand serving for gesture. He wasted no time 
in preface ; nor did he conceal the purpose of his visit 
or unduly flatter his auditors. Rarely speaking over 
ten minutes and usually only five, he was none the less 
under the compulsion of making to each audience a 
complete speech ; and this feat of successful condensa- 
tion was perhaps as remarkable as any he accomplished 
during the day. Between Provincetown and Sandwich 
his speeches varied but little in substance, though with 
the exception of a few happy phrases he rarely re- 
peated the form of expression. State issues were the 
burden of his theme, and those he developed on the 
lines of his Provincetown speech, insisting that Repub- 
lican failure to criticise his administration was an en- 
dorsement of it, and their candidate's failure to avow 
his opinions, a confession of unfitness. Yet with every 



1 6 GOVERNOR RUSSELL 

temptation to speak wholly for himself in a contest 
where he might win, but the national ticket certainly 
could not, he never failed to add a few weighty words 
for it and an eloquent tribute to the Congressional 
candidate, Mr. Thacher, "your honored and trusted 
friend and neighbor," and "that other neighbor," 
whose name always evoked enthusiasm, "whom acci- 
dent made" a native of New Jersey, and the practice of 
his profession a citizen of New York, but who is by 
his own preference a resident of Barnstable County — 
Grover Cleveland of Buzzard's Bay." 

Where the crowd was a large one, Mr. Collins or 
Mr. Hamlin, and sometimes both, and once Mayor 
Matthews, and once Mr. Meriwether, added a few 
words to keep the enthusiasm at its first pitch. Mr. 
Collins's wit was quickly appreciated, especially in 
behalf of "his own candidacy," as he called it, which 
he "was surprised and sorry the Governor had forgotten 
to mention," because his was the first name on the 
ticket (as first elector at large); and Mr. Hamlin's fine 
enthusiasm and sonorous voice proved very contagious. 
("The boy has the brains of the worrlld," said one 
auditor as he concluded a brilliant peroration). Mr. 
Carroll was ill, unfortunately, and could not speak 
after leaving Provincetown — a real loss and disap- 
pointment to everybody. 

So the trip wore on, the nervous tension and excite- 
ment increasing with each successive resumption of the 
attack before new and unflagging audiences, and the 
party on the train growing in proportion with the day ; 
every now and then some one or two local celebrities 



AND HIS CANVASS OF CAPE COD. 1 7 

or enthusiasts joining to swell its roll. Provincetown 
lent it a half dozen, who journeyed as far as Brockton ; 
and others came, tarried and disappeared, all along the 
way. One of these gentlemen said that among the 
seventy-five men in his employ (he was a large builder) 
forty had declared their intention to follow him in his 
abandonment of the Republican party, "and I think 
twenty-five of those will stick," said he; and half a 
dozen men, one a venerable Abolitionist, announced 
at as many different places, their individual conversions 
from life-long Republicanism. 

The crowds during the last half of the journey were 
not only larger but more demonstrative than the 
morning's Repubhcan gatherings. At Yarmouth, the 
Governor's good-natured rally of their Senator, John 
Simpkins, who was present, provoked a storm of 
laughter and applause, and at Tremont, Sandwich and, 
lastly, Middleboro, where the crowd overflowed all 
bounds, there was very great enthusiasm and excite- 
ment. At Sandwich, hand-shaking was abandoned as 
impracticable ; at Middleboro, speaking was nearly as 
impossible ; and there, in the endeavor to make himself 
heard above the noise of the crowd, the ill-advised 
explosion of crackers, and, worst of all, the puffing of 
a freight engine on the siding, the Governor's voice 
showed, for the first time, the strain upon it. 

The last meeting of the day was a fitting climax ; 
and if the gathering of twelve hundred people at eight 
o'clock in the morning to hear political speeches was a 
remarkable thing, the gathering at three in the after- 
noon, in a manufacturing town, of double that number, 



1 8 GOVERNOR RUSSELL 

mostly operatives, was a most impressive instance of 
the deep and abiding interest the economic question 
has aroused in our reading population; and this was 
what awaited the party at the Republican City of 
Brockton, where, at a day's notice, the opera house, 
second only in New England to the Boston Theatre in 
size, was filled with hands from the shoeshops and 
other factories, who had succeeded in getting there, 
nobody knew how. State issues were subordinated 
before this audience whom national issues were per- 
plexing; and those were discussed at great length by 
all the speakers in the company, Mr. Collins being 
especially happy. 

This impressive meeting ended the tour, although 
it nominally continued to Boston, where a small cart- 
load of flowers was taken, at the Governor's request, 
from the car to the Massachusetts General Hospital. 
He had accomplished the most singular political can- 
vass on record, as severe a physical as it was an intel- 
lectual achievement. In less than eight hours he had 
travelled over a great province — seen face to face more 
of its people than any man ever saw in one day before 
— spoken to sixteen different assemblages, fourteen of 
which were in the open air, and shaken hands with an 
indefinite great number of people. Yet absolutely 
without self-regard, as without vanity over this succes- 
sion of individual triumphs, he went that evening to 
his regular assignments, and spoke four times more in 
different suburbs about Boston, till his indomitable 
pluck could no longer control his physical repugnance 
to further effort. i 



AND HIS CANVASS OF CAPE COD. I9 

The effort had not been in vain. Provincetown 
doubled its Democratic vote — Brockton showed great 
gains, and everywhere through the Cape Httle local 
accretions were indicated in the returns, till, out of 
his scant three thousand plurality, Mr. Russell could 
count some eight hundred hardly-earned votes as the 
reward for his day of trial, the ultimate results of which, 
wherever it has stimulated human question and reflec- 
tion, cannot yet be measured by any scale. 





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